The Potential of Creative Arts as a Medium for
Mental Health Promotion in Schools:
An Exploration of Meaning-Making, Belonging and
Identity Using Creative Processes
Patricia Morgan,
Arts Consultant, MA., Dip. Arts, Dip Design.
Education is only possible because the human
being is a being that can transcend itself1
Many thanks to:
Arohanui Grace, Project Manager for Education, Mental Health Foundation,
Auckland.
James Nichol, Northern Regional Manager, Mental Health Foundation,
Auckland.
Stephen Bell, Director, Youthline, Auckland.
John Wenger, Manager Alternative Education Program, Youthline, Auckland.
Adam Dubignon, Steiner Educator, currently conducting graduate research
into systems, education and spirituality, Auckland University, Auckland.
Tina Hong, National Coordinator for Dance, Ministry of Education, Auckland.
Peter O’Connor, National Coordinator for Drama, Ministry of Education,
Auckland.
Christine Massey, Art Teacher, Michael Park and Ruldolf Steiner School,
Auckland.
Maureen Martin, Guidance Counsellor, Otahuhu College, Otahahu, Auckland.
Prue McDougal, Art Teacher Selwyn College, Kohimarama, Auckland.
Catherine Spence, Art Therapist, Refugee Resettlement Centre, Mangere,
Auckland.
Note:
The terms creative art practices/processes and art are used interchangeably,
though ‘creative processes’ I feel provides a wider understanding of Art
Making – as a process including all disciplines and creative activities. For the
citations that use ‘man’ I understand this to mean ‘humankind’.
2
Abstract
This document explores the potential of creative art processes as a
medium for progressive Mental Health Promotion in schools. These
processes have been chosen because of their capacity to deepen
transformative experiences. When engaged with the major themes of
identity, belonging and meaning-making, their experiential nature and
multi-sensory approaches provide insight into and support for
emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
Introduction
Gyorgy Kepes notes that we respond to the images of the artist
because their forms and harmonies touch us at various levels of our
being: sensational, rational, and emotional….Art more and more is
relied on to restore the wholeness of human experience.2
The Mental Health Foundation (MHF) recognizes the potential of the creative
arts and art processes for Mental Health Promotion (MHP) and has most
recently used drama and the plastic arts in awareness raising road shows,
which toured schools throughout 2000. Process drama approaches have also
been employed in curriculum resources such as the Year 7 and 8 Mental
Health Matters and Natural High, a mental health promotion approach to
alcohol and drug problems.
With the growing understanding that improving people’s health is much more
than a medicalised emphasis on disease, attention is now being focused on
enhancement of health and well-being. Health Promotion (HP) and MHP in
school settings, including curriculum based activity, are playing a major part in
these developments. Educational programs are being used as a means of
preventing and controlling health problems. The MHF’s Mentally Healthy
Schools pilot projects and the Health Promoting Schools movement are
examples of such initiatives. HP for example now acknowledges the
inextricable links between the education and health needs of young people. It
also appears that positive educational outcomes are heightened as the health
needs of both students and teachers are addressed.
The development of innovative programmes for MHP using the creative arts
to explore meaning-making will provide a crucial framework for development
in this area. In particular the experiential aspects of creative art processes
have the potential to directly engage young people with a comprehensive
exploration of mental health. Mental health being that which the MHF
describes as “the quality of a person’s psychological, social, and behavioural
functioning in the world.”3
As Arohanui Grace, the Project Manager for Education, MHF says, this work
is about building Hauora4, which Robertson and Dickinson describe as an:
3
….holistic understanding of health as total well-being or hauora, that
focuses not just on the physical – taha tinana, but also the social – taha
whanau, the mental and emotional – taha hinengaro, and the spiritual –
taha wairua, and the interconnectedness of these dimensions.5
To achieve their full potential, young people need opportunities to explore
their physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions. Engaging
with creative processes provides opportunities to explore a multileveled
understanding of identity, initially through an internal dialogue, and then in
relation to their peers, the wider school community and their family.
The following document comprises five sections, starting with introductions to
the two key elements of this inquiry, the reason for using creative art
processes for MHP and an explanation of meaning-making. These are
followed by a discussion of Resilience, how this approach to MHP is most
effective when it fits with the curriculum and the need for ‘Whole School’
action to implement it:

Why Creative Processes?

What is Meaning-Making?

Building Resilience

How it Fits with the Curriculum

Whole School Action
4
Why Creative Processes?
Creative processes require experiential approaches and it is this that allows
an expanding exploration of ‘self’. When applied to MHP the deepening will
occur in relation to a growing understanding of Hauroa. Their universality as
exhibited by their language of symbols is what enables them to bridge social,
educational, racial, and economic barriers. The great social reformer and
dramatist Augosto Boal explains:
At its simplest, the idea underlying this is that ‘a picture paints a
thousand words’; that images can be closer to our true feelings, even
our subconscious feelings.6
This is true for all creative processes, for the images produced be they made
of gesture, sound, brush or stone, can speak for all of the parts of us. Boal
says that art is “immanent to all men.”7 The idea that we are born ‘knowing’
art explains how creative processes enable us to make images which reflect,
communicate and at times weave our disparate views of the world into
something universal. It may also explain their intrinsic therapeutic benefit.
Friere in Pedogogy of the Oppressed, suggests that when all members of
what he’s named the 'culture of silence', are given the proper tools to look
critically at the world in relation to others, the old paternalistic teacher-student
relationship breaks down, so allowing "people (to) educate each other through
the mediation of the world."8 And as the new Arts Curriculum states “The arts
enable people to participate in collaborative and individual pursuits that
contribute to community and personal identity.” 9 When individual identity
meets something universal through creative process, it can create a powerful
sense of belonging and an expanded sense of ‘self’.
Learning in the disciplines of the arts impacts strongly on how students
think and expands the ways in which they can express ideas, feelings,
beliefs and values and understand those of others. Such learning
leads to the development of what can be termed ‘literacies’ in the
arts.10
I would paraphrase this as ‘literacies’ in meaning-making, for as students
develop practical knowledge in all aspects of art practice, including exhibition
and performance, they are learning how ‘meaning’ is made and then
communicated.
Developing a range of ‘literacies’ has always been a primary component of
Steiner educational philosophy. It encourages the practical application of the
body, mind, feelings, spirit continuum, giving equal status to the training of
abstract or logical abilities, pictorial holistic thinking and emotional responses.
In Education Through Art, Nobel introduces the Steiner concept of the ‘third
factor’, that is the gestalt created within the individual, when “living form
springs into existence, (the) necessary third realm between soul and reason,
the world of art.”11 She believes that the current emphasis in state systems
on analytic ‘mechanistic’ approaches to learning, is inhibiting this vital aspect
5
of learning. It needs to be rebalanced by giving equal status to experiential
(art) practices:
If an individual’s talents are not encouraged to grow, and if he is not
trained continuously in the active creation of knowledge, but is given all
his information….following a mechanical view of knowledge, the
individual will lose faith in his own part in the thinking process and he
will be unable to form an idea of integration and will only see splintered
fragments.12
Adam Dubignon a Steiner educator working in Auckland echoed this need for
a more holistic approach when we spoke. He believes that many young
people suffer frustration because the world they live in doesn’t hold meaning
for them. He feels this comes from the conflict of what he termed their global
(or expanding) consciousness, with the empirical systems they are
surrounded by. This disjunction causes a sense of fragmentation, pain and
frustration.
Stephen Bell, Director of Youthline finds that the multiple levels of
fragmentation in the lives of the young people that his organisation works with
are having a devastating effect. Miller in Educating the Soul explores this
growing problem, when he contrasts the ‘empirical’ with the ‘global’:
….unlike cognitive logic that seeks the right answer, soul logic seeks
the healthy answer that serves the whole being. Sardello states:
“Illness occurs when something partial is taken to be whole.13
Youthline’s dedication to holistic learning can be seen in their MHP programs,
in which they provide experiential interactive learning environments. In the
over eight hundred programs in schools, which they have carried out since
their inception, they have moved far beyond the simple delivery of content.
What follows is a brief overview of the concepts, which support their Action
Education Philosophy:






Group settings foster the sharing of information and lifeexperiences.
Debate and discussion can occur with respect for differing
attitudes, values and experience.
Learning is most effective when the process of learning is taken
into account. The experience is as important as the knowledge.
A healthy self-image and self-esteem are the basis for and
generators of learning and positive change.
Acknowledge the importance of maintaining the respect for the
knowledge and potential of everyone.
Creativity is not confined to a special minority, but is inherent in
everyone.
These guidelines support the concept of our inborn ‘creativity’ and the need
to recognise it as a powerful tool for change. As Dewey states it “breaks
6
through the crust of conventionalised and routine consciousness.” 14 Friere
expands on this:
….man’s ontological vocation is to be a subject who acts upon and
transforms his world, and in so doing moves toward ever new
possibilities of fuller and richer life individually and collectively.” 15
Opening to these possibilities, through the use of innovative creative arts
programs requires a (school) culture, which “encourages diversity and
tolerates the seeming ambiguity that such diversity suggests.” 16
While
Eisner’s calls for a particular school culture to support these programs, Shirley
Coyle17 has shown in her work in New South Wales, Australia, that the arts
also prompt the development of new school cultures. Coyle used art
processes in a program to counter racism, and its direct and positive impact
on the culture of the schools she worked in, was recently recognised by
UNESCO. Eisner further explores this ambiguity implicit in comprehensive
holistic learning environments, when he presents creative inquiry as one in
which a focus is sustained while ‘gaps’ in meaning are investigated. He
describes the individual engaged in this process as a “system in tension,
sensitive to the gaps in his experience and capable of maintaining this state of
affairs.”18
Modes of Knowing
While these ‘gaps’ exist in all forms of inquiry, art practices provide the
opportunity for a multi-sensory and therefore deeper experience. In the
current educational environment there is a growing awareness and
acceptance of ‘sensory response’ as it relates to the concept of different
‘learning styles’. Contributors to New Horizons: Arts Studio, emphasise the
need to provide for the symbolic systems of the visual/spatial,
bodily/kinaesthetic, and the musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal
intelligences, which they say have until recently been dominated by the
verbal/logical intelligences.
Dickinson quotes the United States Department of Education’s report:
Schools, Communities and the Arts: A Research Compendium, in which it
was found that students who struggled with (verbal) instruction based
programs, showed marked improvements when they engaged with processes
that required their visual or kinaesthetic abilities. She supports this with
research from Specific Diagnostic Studies, which shows that:
….students whose strongest learning channel is auditory comprise less
than 15% of the population. On the other hand, students who
demonstrate a visual learning style are about 40% of the population….
There are also many students who must hold ideas in their hands
before they can understand and learn….These kinaesthetic or haptic
students form about 45% of the population….The arts offer especially
valuable tools to facilitate learning for those who are primarily visual
and kinaesthetic.19
7
Eisner’s educational philosophy also incorporates different ‘modes of
knowing’: knowing in language forms, in visual and plastic forms, in qualitative
and sensory, practical and technical forms. He expands this to describe every
mode of knowing as ‘co-creation’, or “participation in the continual creation of
the universe of one’s self….”20
In Summary:

Creative art processes provide the universal language of symbols which all
people can speak.

They integrate mind, body, emotion and spirit.

They provide opportunities for an expanded understanding of ‘self’ as they
bridge the individual’s inner world with that of outer concrete reality.

They provide opportunities to experience ‘process’ from beginning to end,
so expanding participant’s range of literacies.

They merge the learning of process and content, so connecting thinking
with doing.

They exercise and develop higher order thinking skills, including analysis,
synthesis, evaluation, and ‘problem finding’.

They ground personal insight, for what is created in the art process
provides a visual, written, musical or dramatic form, which then reflects
that insight. This reflection or ‘space’ is where meaning is made.
8
What is Meaning-Making?
Meaning-making is the construction of 'comprehension' from an individual’s
experience. This may be the discovery of completely new core constructs or
the reframing of current ideas. It requires an engagement with people,
places, ideas or things, to create an ‘internal’ space in which an energetic
information exchange can occur. This is what enables the individual to grasp
an understanding of the unity between their 'inner' and 'outer' worlds. In the
‘space’ that creative process provides, one recognises themselves as this is
reflected back by the image/word/sound they have made, and so
comprehension expands.
By way of example an art-based meaning-making project is outlined by the art
educators Honigman and Bhavnagri. Their Painting with Scissors program
was based on the work of Henry Matisse. Though they were working
specifically with the plastic arts and a particular age group, their description of
the children’s engagement in a creative arts process is elucidating:
During the process, children were inventing, discovering and problem
solving, which is necessary for meaning-making….and for developing a
broader mental functioning….the children were able to think like artists
because they had to figure out how to use visual forms to convey an
idea. Remarks such as “I am putting lots of colors real close to each
other so people know it’s fireworks”, demonstrate their understanding
that shape, color and composition are elements of a language, just as
the spoken and written work and nonverbal gestures are elements of a
different kind of human language.21
Dosamantes-Beaudry uses such a language, which she describes as a
‘nonverbal mode of expression’. As a dance therapist working cross-culturally
through ethnicity and physical difference, she has explored ‘disjunctive
moments’, in which her ‘culture’ inhibits communication with another. She
terms her ground of meaning-making the ‘cultural unconscious’, and while in
this context it is applied to ethnicity and physical difference; these are the
singular pools or areas of difference in which we all swim. As they are equally
relevant to any meaning-making process being sensitive to them is important:
….cultural differences exist in the way members of different cultural
groups approach and interpret their unconscious symbolic experience
and in the kinds of defences they resort to when protecting themselves
against the experience of a loss of self-integrity.22
The ‘gaps’ that occur while meaning is formulating need to be treated
sensitively, for as Dosmates-Beaudry found, ‘self integrity’ or ‘identity’ are
fragile here and may be negatively challenged. Eisner also calls for caution
as he believes that the ‘whole being’ is continually affected, for we are in fact
in a continual state of meaning-making:
….it is not that a person makes meaning, as much as that the activity
of being a person is the activity of meaning-making. There is thus no
9
feeling, no experience, no thought, no perception, independent of a
meaning-making context….because we are the meaning-making
context.23
By acknowledging that we in our process of being, become the ‘place of
meaning’, also establishes a context for the art process. And in this internal
space we may encounter what Eisner calls the ‘suprasensory’. For by
entering “new ways, new knowledge, new relationships, new awareness,” 24
we can engage with the transcendent. Before engaging with multi-layered
‘suprasensory’ worlds, he suggests “mining the veins of various religious
traditions”25 for the language of the transcendence. These histories, stories,
myths, paintings, songs and poems, hold symbols of ‘otherness’, which can
be used to gain insight.
In her project Stories and Art the American educationalist Alice Arnold
presents story telling as a ‘multisensory teaching process’ in which, “stories
can provide a point of departure for art explorations that allow multiple levels
of meaning to emerge.”26 Creative processes provide sensory rich ‘states’ in
which many layers of understanding can be observed. The process being
engaged, becomes the “organising principle by which knowledge of the
human condition is rendered into a form that makes thinking possible.” 27
The rhythms of movement from action to reflection and from reflection upon
that action to new action are required to do this. They are the rhythms of
learning that Heathcote sought recognition for throughout her education
reforms. She states it simply, as knowledge having two aspects: “How you
get experience, and how you process experience.”28 This principle now
underlies the new Arts and Health Curriculums:
….the cycle of action and reflection is a dynamic process that unites
theory and practice. It is common to most learning and teaching
situations and fundamental to this curriculum.29
Boal’s concept of metaxis also embodies the ‘action reflection’ principle. In
essence it suggests that the space between the world in which one lives and
the fictional world created in art processes, is the place that meaning is made.
It is in this ‘gap’ between the two worlds that one is able to simultaneously
reflect on and possibly reframe aspects of both places.
These cycles require a movement from old to new meanings, a process that
Piaget termed 'decentration'. This loss of an old centre for the new is:
....the beginning of a history of transformations, each of which is a
better guarantee to the world of its distinct integrity, a history of
successive emergence form it (differentiation) in order to relate to it
(integration).30
Eisner cautions that “every mode of knowing is a mode of being open,
vulnerable, and available to the internal and external world.” 31 To explore new
aspects of ‘self’ is to risk an encounter with structures that are beyond our
10
knowing, potentially both a challenging and exhilarating experience. Allowing
an openness to the ‘unknown’, a vulnerability in the internal landscape, is to
encounter “a function of the permeability of the boundaries in the inner
personal regions that are usually blocked from consciousness.”32 Creative
processes provide the balance to these explorations, as their material
requirements ground the suprasensory.
The educational philosopher David Best believes that the reification of these
‘states’, has relegated them to an ‘occult’ function of the elite artist/art student.
By doing this their significance is lost, both to that individual and their
community(s). While not denying their power or meaning, he suggests that it
is more useful to view them “as rooted in natural reactions and cultural
practices,” so emphasising the “inseparability of art and life (as) the arts are
rooted in the shared human life.”33 Speaking of processes that contain both
‘transcendence’ and ‘natural reactions’ may seem paradoxical, but the
development of MHP creative arts programs in which the richness of this
spectrum is encapsulated, will provide the participants with a comprehensive
understanding of Hauora.
Values
In calling for ‘real’ experience as the subject of these processes, and
instigating practices that acknowledge and honour it as their foundation, one
needs to be mindful of Levis’ insight that “sincerity is inseparable from
reality.”34 Real engagement is necessary when working in the realms of
meaning-making, and it underpins another fundamental aspect of this area of
learning, which is that of ‘values’. In making his case for the cognitive
character of ‘feelings’, Best explains that sincerity provides “a clearer
understanding of the poetic criteria of feeling (which) is inseparably related to
the possibility of deeper and more discriminating feelings.”35
Champion provides the example of her program The Adolescent Quest for
Meaning Through Multicultural Reading at Hialeah High School in Dade
County, Florida. It focused on personal myth and the archetypal hero to
explore the role that the library media program played in easing adolescent
migrants struggles to assimilate. It was found that:
When the students were asked to discuss their immigrant experience,
their descriptions centred on common values and sensitivities. The
differences traditionally ascribed to race and ethnicity were missing in
their accounts. Beyond the common adolescent preoccupations with
self, clothes, hair, members of the opposite sex, music, cars, and
parties, students demonstrated an uncanny awareness of the
universality of the human condition….Furthermore, most expressed a
desire to understand how to make meaning out of these experiences. 36
This program grew from an understanding that adolescents are in an
accelerated state of ‘becoming’ in which making meaning and relating the
resulting realisations is a priority. Using the archetypal hero as their subject
provided the participants with a positive symbol to engage with as they
11
explored their current identity.
discoveries:
One student poignantly describes his
….I have felt so alone. I thought I was the only one with problems, but
when I read the line – ‘Tis not too late to seek a new world’ spoken by
that old man Ulysses, I felt I had a better shot than he did.37
As the group moved through the creative writing program, it was found that
cultural difference ceased to be a problem. The disparate individuals became
a coherent group, joining and interacting as ‘culture makers’ and ultimately as
new ‘culture bearers’. They discovered personal meaning in their situations,
named it through the story-making process and integrated these new
meanings into an expanded sense of ‘self’.
Ron Phillips of the South Auckland Adolescent Youth Mental Health Unit in
Papakura, has been using a similar program, with extraordinary results. His
book Gem of the First Water38 contains a myth which he uses with a range of
art processes to assist suicidal young people in their recovery. It appears that
engagement with the narrative of the fable allows the young people to create
a space between their internal dialogue and the external world in which they
are struggling. In so doing they are able to relocate themselves in both places
in a more meaningful way.
Providing a forum for the ‘deeper feelings’ or multi-layered responses that can
occur in creative process, is to supply a means to exercise values. The
current Health Curriculum emphasises the need for values-based programs
and provides examples of the areas in which it can be done, some of which
are: ‘the strengthening of personal identity and enhancement of a sense of
self worth, the examination of discrimination and stereotyping, and the
understanding of interpersonal skills and development of healthy choicemaking’. Values-based MHP programs operating in these and other areas
need to address both the climate in which each program is developed and
also the ethos of the school in which it is delivered.
In Summary:

Meaning-Making is the construction of ‘new’ knowledge from
experience.

Creative art processes allow communication
‘languages’, so bridging ‘inner and outer’ worlds.

The individual is the ‘meaning making context’.

Multi-sensory approaches allow for transcendent moments in which
‘new’ aspects of self can be accessed.

Combining both realisations from transcendence and natural reactions,
through creative art processes, can provide a comprehensive
understanding of Hauora.
with
nonverbal
12

Action and reflection within creative processes unite theory and
practice.

Creative art processes which explore meaning making also supply a
means to exercise values.
13
Building Resilience
While many young people in our schools do not experience the difficulties
associated with being a new migrant as described in Champion’s program,
their problems with communication highlight the potential for
misunderstanding between the many diverse groups, which coalesce within
every school. As well as the obvious disparities there are the more subtle but
equally important developmental ‘differences’ of adolescence.
These
accelerated stages of ‘becoming’ can potentially create gulfs in understanding
between peers, family and community.
Methods to bridge cultural and developmental difference, need to include the
resiliency paradigm or strength-based approach that frequently underlies
MHP enterprises. The promotion of mental health as described in the MHF’s
Mental Health Promotion in the School Arena, is about the development of
‘positive self regard’, supported by ‘positive schools’, through the three key
components of: ‘feeling secure, feeling connected and feeling valued’.
Joubert and Raeburn in Mental Health Promotion restate these in their
‘Resourcefulness/Resourcing Framework’, which presents resourcefulness as
resilience and resourcing as supportive environments. It is supported by their
model of ‘Being, Belonging and Becoming’: with Being relating to how the
individual feels about themselves, Belonging to social, cultural and
environmental aspects, and Becoming to aspirations and development. They
also emphasise that it is the “subjective experience of life that counts.” 39
The concept of resilience is directly linked to that of meaning-making, for the
building of competence or capacity comes about through an exploration of
‘identity’. Joubert and Raeburn found in many of their community-based
projects that the strengthening of “developmental factors, such as a sense of
identity, autonomy, accomplishment and belonging (enhanced) individual’s
capacity to face the ever changing and challenging realities of life.”40
The ‘resilience paradigm’ is founded on the understanding that most people
have the capacity to act on their own behalf, “to learn and grow in the fight to
prevail.”41 It is as Project Resilience suggests a shift from the ‘risk paradigm’,
in which the investigation and identification of pathology emphasises
vulnerabilities, to a ‘resilience paradigm’. They propose that the most
important part of a strength-based approach is to believe that young people
(all people), have strengths and can act on them.
The psychologist and anthroposophist Ann Nobel found this time and again in
her hospital-based practice. She recalls her initial impressions of the ‘at-risk’
children she worked with:
It used to amaze me at the time what great inner resources these
children proved to have. This was especially noticeable when they
were allowed to express themselves artistically. 42
As Champion discovered the transition from ‘culture maker’ to ‘culture bearer’
in her literature program, so to did Desetta and Wolin in their project Youth
14
Communications: A Model Program for Fostering Resilience Through the Art
of Writing. They also found that as the participants ‘constructed’ their story, it
‘re-constructed’ them! In the reframing of their experiences, troubled young
people experienced the therapeutic benefits of recognising “previously unseen
elements of their struggles – clients will reinterpret themselves – construct a
new life story that will (then) be the basis for living well in the present.” 43 It is
as these new understandings grow, that the opportunities for an embodied
comprehension of Hauroa follows. Arohanui Grace, MHF, spoke of the
creative arts as a conscious medium for building qualities of awareness in
relation to well-being; that is the building of resilience.
Project Resilience was based on in-depth interviews with 25 adults who had
successfully overcame very difficult childhoods. On answering how they did
this, many recalled that they had “relied on writing to gain insight into their
lives, and how that insight in turn, was central to repairing the harm they had
suffered.”44 In the Mentally Healthy Schools Initiative the MHF established
that programs to support the formation of these kinds of insights need to
provide a:




A sense of a secure environment
The skills to participate and contribute
The opportunities to participate and contribute
A sense that the contribution is valued45
As Prue McDougal, an Art Teacher at Selwyn College, Auckland, simply
stated about her teaching style: “I make the kids feel successful.” Once a
deepening understanding of Hauora is established these programs support
the development of positive self regard. This includes ‘feeling of influence’,
for to feel of influence is to feel of value. As Gibbs agrees in Tribes: A New
Way of Learning and Being Together:
When one has no stake in the way things are, when one's needs or
opinions are provided no forum, when one sees oneself as the object
of unilateral actions, it takes no particular wisdom to suggest one would
rather be elsewhere.46
Being of influence relates to another HP concept that of ‘self determination’,
which according to Joubert and Raeburn is one of the three core values of
MHP, the other two being ‘enabling’ and ‘empowerment’. All three are
essential for creative arts programs that address resilience and meaning
making.
It can be said that the arts supplanted ritual as tools of meaning-making,
though their relegation to the ‘territory of the occult’ or as a practice of an elite,
has seen this function denied to the majority. The theatrical work of Brecht
and Boal among others, are political statements demanding the return of
these tools to ‘the people’. They have reintroduced the means and place for
all people to express themselves, create meaning, and find a place of
belonging. It is well known that without this space our well-being suffers. Art
processes provide the more flexible symbolic language with which young
15
people can engage and begin to redress the fragmentation and ensuing
mental health issues, which they currently face.
It still might be asked how necessary these sorts of programs are? Recent
research into adolescent health and youth suicide indicates that they are vital.
Particularly marginalised groups of young people with no means to express
themselves, often feel left with no alternative. There is an urgency for new
and innovative MHP programs for young people. Bennett and Coggan
reiterate this in A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Mentally Healthy Schools
Initiative:
In recent years both Health and Education authorities in Aotearoa/New
Zealand have recognised that young people may be particularly
vulnerable to emotional distress and poor mental health. It has been
estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of adolescents at some time
will require professional mental health services. Other research
indicates that by the age of 18, more than one third of young people
will experience some type of mental health problem to which a
diagnostic label could be applied;47
In summary:

The communication problems created by cultural and developmental
diversity can be addressed with programs that support the
development of positive self-regard.

Self-reflection in creative process enhances the development of
resilience, which includes feeling of value or influence. Feeling of
value relates to one of three core values of MHP, that of ‘self
determination’, the other two being ‘enabling’ and ‘empowerment’.

Resourcefulness and resourcing are key concepts in MHP, which can
be translated to resourcefulness = resilience and resourcing =
supportive environments.

We are currently witnessing a shift from the ‘risk paradigm’, which
focused on pathology and vulnerabilities, to a ‘resilience paradigm’,
which acknowledges individual strengths.

There is an urgent need for innovative MHP Programs, which address
the health and well being of young people in New Zealand.
16
How it Fits With the Curriculum
We believe that integrating creative arts programs, which are aimed at
improving young people’s understanding of Hauora, with the curriculum, will
help alleviate some of the problems described by Bennett and Coggan. This
also depends on other factors such as school ethos and the provision of
accompanying teacher development programs. We are aware that any such
program will be most effective when done in collaboration with current school
and community interventions, awareness raising programs and direct
curriculum activities.
Engaging in curriculum integrated, multidisciplinary creative art processes will
provide a more holistic understanding of Hauora, particularly if they are
cemented by peer group learning and the support of the wider school
community. As Nichol and O'Connor suggest in Natural High, the result of a
comprehensive health education that emphasises holism, will provide
participants with “personal and interpersonal communication skills (and) with
elements of problem-solving, decision-making and assertiveness.”48
These sorts of gains are reflected by Dickinson’s findings, such as the
example she quotes from the United States Department of Education’s 1995
report, Schools, Communities, and the Arts: A Research Compendium, which
states that “using arts processes to teach academic subjects results not only
in improved understanding of content but in greatly improved self-regulatory
behaviour.”49
These programs are very timely, as their philosophical underpinnings match
those of the new Health and Arts Curriculums. Their Hauora focus reflects
what we believe to be a general trend towards a more holistic understanding
and approach to Mental Health, for: “Positive Mental Health is a prerequisite
if students are to reach their highest academic, physical, and social
potential.”50
The concepts of Hauora/Wellbeing, Health Promotion, The Socio-Ecological
Perspective and Attitudes and Values are the four underlying concepts that
support the framework for learning in the curriculum areas. As can be seen
from this document, they also match our own imperatives. They are then
supported by ‘Essential Skill Areas’, which include: Communication, Social
and Cooperative, Problem-Solving, Self Management and Physical Skills.
Young people engage with these skill areas through the distinct disciplines of
music, dance, drama and the visual arts, and similarly in the Health
Curriculum. In both of these curriculum areas there are the opportunities to
participate in collaborative multi-disciplinary projects across subject areas.
From the Arts Curriculum for example the conjunction of Dance and
Mathematics allows students to “investigate and explore patterns,
relationships, symmetry and transformations in choreography and performing
dance works.”51
These types of cross-disciplinary approaches, or 'blurred genres' as
Heathcote describes them, require the whole person’s involvement, which in
17
turn is what allows a deeper exploration of personal identity. The current
trialing of this interface of disciplines and subject areas in the new
curriculums, will we believe provide the necessary framework, for the kind of
MHP Programs we are suggesting.
Tina Hong, national co-ordinator for Dance in the new Arts Curriculum,
suggests that a partial shift from discrete disciplines to a more generic
approach, allows for the accommodation of different learning styles and the
development of new art ‘literacies’. This provides a wider forum for the
conceptualising of ‘self’, within the context of the individual ‘creative process
communities’. Hong also suggested that a sense of belonging develops when
creative art-making processes provide the participants with opportunities to
come to terms with ideas, feelings and beliefs within a social and collaborative
structure. Group identity is forged as participants develop the means to turn
new concepts of ‘self’ into public statements, so redressing common themes
of alienation and fragmentation. She feels that the strength of the new Arts
Curriculum is its emphasis on awareness raising within the context of
‘different ways of knowing’, in other words the development of new ‘literacies’.
In a more pragmatic vein, it also appears from an American example that the
integration of creative processes across the curriculum has positive academic
outcomes:
In Needham Massachusetts at the John Eliot School, the arts are fully
integrated throughout the curriculum, and academic achievement is
soaring….John Eliot does not cater to superior, talented students and
many are economically disadvantaged, but nonetheless their 1992
MEAP (Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program ) scores
were the highest in the state.52
In Summary

Engaging in mental health promoting cross-disciplinary creative
processes will provide a more holistic understanding of Hauora, as they
involve the ‘whole’ person.

Such processes support the development of interpersonal
communication, problem-solving, decision-making and assertiveness
skills.

The introduction of these programs is timely as their philosophical
underpinnings match those of the new Health and Arts Curriculums.

Creative arts programs, which effectively interface with the curriculum
impact positively on academic outcomes.

Multi-disciplinary creative MHP projects provide participants with the
opportunity to come to terms with ideas, feelings and beliefs in a
collaborative structure, where group identity is forged and a sense of
18
belonging, which can redress current problems of alienation and
fragmentation.
19
Whole School Action
....learning environments are agents of social change and can provide
an environment that reinforces social cohesion, healthy values and
collective well-being.53
Acknowledging the importance of an interdisciplinary approach necessitates
the inclusion of the concept of 'interconnectedness'.
Programs that
acknowledge ‘wholeness’ also recognise the interconnection and overlaps of
all of their parts and the affects of these amalgams. School ethos for example
will directly impact on the success of MHP programs, as both the implicit and
explicit values of the school will either support or stall it. It is important to be
aware of inconsistencies between intended school ethos and what is actually
happening. Bennett and Coggan provide a number of examples in A
Comprehensive Evaluation of the Mentally Healthy Schools Initiative, for
instance they ask:
What message do teachers and students get about respecting others
and not using violence if other people use verbal (or physical) violence
against them?54
As has been mentioned earlier school ethos has a direct impact on the
mental, physical and emotional well-being of the individuals of the school
community. Every aspect of the school including teacher training support and
involvement has an impact. The long-term sustainability of these programs "is
contingent on the tangible and sustainable support provided by school
management representatives."55
Comprehensive MHP processes incorporating a 'Whole School' approach,
honour every member of the school, incorporate all aspects of the school and
allow inclusive entry points for these multiple strands to join. The Treaty of
Waitangi provides a framework for this type of approach:
In Aotearoa/New Zealand the philosophy of Health Promoting Schools
is underpinned by the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, that is,
working in partnership with the whole school community and through
advocacy and mediation enabling participation and ensuring the
protection of all members of the school community.56
Participation and protection are just two of a number of tenets that support the
concept of environments of interconnectedness, as represented by ‘Whole
School’ action. Eisner translates these webs of interrelationship into a
universal context, in which they become an 'energy system', this he believes
is not so much in us, but something that we are in. It is "an energy system of
all living things."57 Anthroposophical educational philosophy provides for an
awareness of these multiple levels of interconnection, narrowing the gap
between theory and practice to engage the whole person:
The student as well as teacher must be in a position of continuously
experiencing as well as creating the knowledge and the material with
20
which he comes into contact. Without such an inner effort, and the
formative, shaping aspects which it involves, no real insight is achieved
- no knowledge of life in its full extent....by introducing a creative,
artistic element into the process of knowledge, the material can be
given a concrete living form and thereby the interplay and unity
between form and content, as between Nature and Spirit, the inner and
the outer, can also be experienced by the person.58
Boal's Invisible Theatre also widens the possibilities for the dissolution of
limiting individual roles, thereby creating the blurred boundaries, which are
necessary for a comprehensive educational exchange. His invention of the
'Spect-actor' breaks down the barrier between actors and spectators for "all
must act, all must be protagonists in the necessary transformations of
society." 59 Equally for successful educational exchanges all members of the
educational environment need to become ‘social actors’, rather than ‘social
spectators’. It is as Boal suggests we need to change the monologue of life
to a dialogue. Echoing this call for change in role assignment and definition,
Heathcote affirms that the paradigm of ‘teacher as subject of the learning
process and pupil as object’ is now outmoded. "The liberating educator is
with the students, instead of doing things for the students; we give something
to the students only when we exchange something."60
Heathcote speaks of a 'silence' similar to Friere’s and while his philosophy
developed out of direct political action as opposed to educational reform, it
mirrors her call for the active engagement with and naming of one’s
experience. Friere believes that, "every human being, no matter how
‘ignorant’ or submerged in the ‘culture of silence’ he or she may be, is capable
of looking critically at the world", and in this act the "individual wins back the
right to say his or her own word, to name the world."61 Heathcote found a
'culture of silence' in the classrooms, where students become non-participants
as they internalised passive roles scripted for them:
The students are silent, because they no longer expect education to
include the joy of learning, or even that education will speak to the real
conditions of their lives.62
Addressing these ‘real’ issues echoes Best's call for 'sincerity', which requires
an exploration of the 'real' conditions of an individual's life. Direct links into
real experience cement productive meaning making processes that can
facilitate the development of positive self regard. Boal has developed
processes in his Image Theatre, which support these kinds of explorations:
The participants in Image Theatre make still images of their lives,
feelings, experiences, oppressions....however the image never remains
static - as with the Theatre of the Oppressed, the frozen image is
simply the starting point....the bringing to life of the images and the
discovery of whatever direction or intention is innate in them. 63
To facilitate these types of creative learning processes Gibbs presents three
fundamental elements: the encouragement of active participation, cooperative
21
group learning using collaborative approaches, and most importantly the
application of democratic processes. Processes of this kind have also been
developed and trialed by the educational psychologist and theorist William
Glasser, based on his Control Theory. It is a 'biological theory' in which he
"maintains that all we do is behave and that our behaviour is internally
motivated and chosen."64 These processes are underpinned by five core
principles:

All behaviour is purposeful and is chosen as an attempt to satisfy
basic needs that are built into our genetic structure.

Each of us has our own specific, unique pictures of how we can get
our needs met.

Behaviour is total - it has 4 components: Acting, Thinking, Feeling
and Physiology.

When we change the actions and thoughts, the feelings and
physiology follow.

All behaviour is flexible and creative.65
Glasser’s approach and that of Heathcote, Best, Boal and others are all
valuable epistemologies to draw on to support this framework for innovative
MHP programs. It is also important that they are sustained by a healthy
school climate in which there are:

Clear but flexible school goals, rules, visions and expectations;

Equal treatment for all students, including teachers interest in students and
opportunities for student success and empowerment;

Curriculum relevant to life and world outside the school;

Empowered, enthusiastic, supportive and approachable teaching staff and
senior school management committed to school improvement; and

Active student and parent involvement in school processes including
governance of the school.66
The success of this type of program also depends on its ability to be self
reflexive, that is open to feedback from all participants and having built-in
evaluative mechanisms. John Wenger the manager of the Alternative
Education Program at Youthline outlined the importance of this precept. He
explained that the young people they are working with have fallen through the
cracks of the conventional school system, primarily because they weren’t
able, for many different reasons, to form relationships with peers or teachers
and therefore freely communicate their needs. First and foremost he believes
that any such program needs to be about heart, and about coming from a
22
place of wanting to do good. This is then supported by a culture that values
healthy relationships, which is about feedback and change, and remaining
open to concepts from other ‘traditions’.
Finally as Bennett and Coggan say these initiatives are already sought by
many young people:
Interestingly, adolescents report a greater interest in mental health
rather
than
mental
illness,
and
perceive
accessing
prevention/promotion information and techniques for mental health and
well being as important to their needs.67
In Summary:

Comprehensive MHP programs are underpinned by the concept of
‘Interconnection’, which supports approaches aimed at the 'whole'
person.

Sincere and open exploration of the students 'real' experiences in
creative MHP programs, facilitates a comprehensive understanding of
Hauora

All aspects of the school need to be taken into account, in particular
school ethos and teacher training and support.

The teacher as subject of the learning and student as object is an
outmoded paradigm.

Successful programs need to be self
opportunities for feedback and evaluation.
1
reflexive
–
containing
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25